The present invention generally relates to controlling head movement and, more particularly, to controlling head movement responsive to a position error signal within a servo control loop.
A typical data storage disk drive includes a plurality of magnetic recording disks which are mounted to a rotatable hub of a spindle motor and rotated at a high speed. An array of read/write heads is disposed adjacent to surfaces of the disks to transfer data between the disks and a host device. The heads can be radially positioned over the disks by a rotary actuator and a closed loop servo system.
The servo system can operate in two primary modes: seeking and track following. During a seek, a selected head is moved from an initial track to a target track on the corresponding disk surface. Upon reaching the target track, the servo system enters the track following mode wherein the head is maintained over the center of the target track while data is written/read. During track following, prerecorded servo burst fields are sensed by the head and demodulated to generate a position error signal (PES), which provides an indication of the position error of the head away from a desired location along the track (e.g., the track center). The PES is then converted into an actuator control signal, which is fed back to a head actuator that positions the head.
As the areal density of magnetic disc drives increases, so does the need for more precise position control when track following, especially in the presence of vibrations which can cause repeatable and non-repeatable runout error in head positioning and variation in disk speed.